Grand Theft Auto III: IGN Editors' Best Memories

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Ten years after its launch, IGN editors look back at a game that changed the world.

By IGN Staff

Ten years ago Grand Theft Auto III appeared in our lives. For many of us here at IGN, GTA III was a defining moment in gaming. We decided to honor Grand Theft Auto III with stories about what it meant to us back in 2001, and what it means to us now.

Exit Theatre Mode

For me, Grand Theft Auto III will always be about the multi-tiered parking garage on Staunton Island. I spent many nights of my sophomore year of college holding down that garage and seeing just how long I could survive with a six-star wanted level, trading off with friends when the heat got too strong and an errant chopper took me out.

At the time, Grand Theft Auto III's islands were immense and the streets a maze of enormity. After leaving a scene of wrecked cars and dead bodies, it was astonishing to return to the scene of the crime later and find the wrecked bodywork of a hot car still smoking from the earlier chaos.

To be honest, I didn't even finish the narrative until 2010 on PC, long after its original release. But that's just it -- in a game world so immense and well realized, Grand Theft Auto is about writing your own stories. Sure you need to play through some missions to unlock the full scope of the world, but there's a reason the game's called a sandbox.

Anyone who was gaming back in 2001 remembers how much of a paradigm shift Grand Theft Auto III was. It was a hell of a game, an open-world sandbox the likes of which console players had never really seen before. Its legacy is well-deserved.

But believe it or not, for me, the greatest memory I have of Grand Theft Auto III isn't the actual game itself. Sure, I lost scores of hours playing it, impressing my friends (and depressing my appalled father) with its unique, violent and spontaneous gameplay. But actually acquiring the game was another adventure entirely.

I was a senior in high school when GTA III launched. Having come out the week following my 17th birthday, I should have been able to buy the M-rated game outright at the store, but lacking identification and the will to ask my parents to buy it for me, I went and attempted the purchase on my own. The EB at Smith Haven Mall on Long Island wouldn't budge, however, and it appeared all hope was lost.

But I persevered. Standing outside of EB in the food court, just to the side of the front window so that the clerks couldn't see me, I quickly solicited a stranger willing to buy the game for me. He was a man in his 30s, walking around with his wife, pushing around a baby carriage with a small child inside. I told him about my plight, handed him $60 and told him that if he acquired the game for me, he could keep the change. And he did just that, walking into the store, buying the game, and handing it over to me mere minutes later. He even attempted to give me the $5 or $6 he had left, which I politely declined. Hey -- a deal's a deal.

So thank you, Mr. Anonymous. You were the reason I was able to play GTA III that fateful October, falling in love with a series I still have a profound respect for to this day.

In 2001 I was living at home, working part-time and approaching the end of my first year at university. I was 18, and the two most expensive things I owned were my car and my PS2.

I remember playing the original Grand Theft Auto religiously. I never owned the sequel, but I recall a night I spent at a friend's house where he and another mate of mine went out to get us all dinner. They returned with a freshly-purchased copy of GTA 2 and no food. We played it all night instead of eating. But GTA III was something altogether different.

Up until it came out, GTA III was very much a game that existed only in imaginations. The kind of game the likes of Driver 2 gave you a subtle sniff of but nobody had made yet. GTA III changed everything. GTA III changed the way people talked about games. It changed the way people made games. It changed the way people looked at games. It changed the way I looked at games.

I had preordered GTA III because it seemed like the thing to do. I remember forgetting the day it was coming out and getting a call on my way to uni reminding me I could pick it up. My university was around 45 minutes from my house and I was almost there. To this day I can point out exactly where I did the U-turn that took me back home again to pick up GTAIII. I don't know what I missed that day. It probably wasn't important.

I also remember the classification debacle down here in Australia; the game had actually been refused classification and vanished from shelves for a brief period until a version sans the ability to pick up prostitutes was created and re-released.

I do miss those days a bit, to be honest. The days when I was old enough to drive and buy a case of beer but too young to have many other responsibilities. The days before PSN or Xbox Live, where a good multiplayer session involved heading to a mate's house and losing hours passing around a controller playing GTA III.

GTA III reminds me of when I was 18; all grown up but ultimately still just looking to have fun. In many ways, that was GTAIII. A technical masterpiece and a truly impressive evolution in games, but still a hoodlum at heart.

Walk'em dry.

I had no interest in the Grand Theft Auto series when GTA III was released. But my friend bought it, scratched his disk badly, and decided to throw it away. It seemed strange to me that it couldn't be fixed, so I went to the store and bought a DIY kit, spent two hours buffing the disc, and eventually got it working. I still didn't have much interest in the franchise, but I was too into the idea of getting a free game to let him just throw it away.

Fast forward a few hours and I had found a new love in the open world of Liberty City. I didn't bother doing quests for the first two days I had it; I was too enraptured in the freedom I had to steal cars and be a crazy citizen that I just didn't bother. I played the hell out of it that first summer and bonded with many friends during epic car-thieving sessions during my first year in college. I still can't find it in myself to finish that many Rockstar open-world games, but the sheer love I had for GTA III makes me buy every single one of them to see if the passion I had in 2001 will be rekindled.